


Psychosomatic Remembrances

by SweetAndSharp



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation, Sort-of-but-not-really-major-character-death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetAndSharp/pseuds/SweetAndSharp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mark injures his leg it opens up some fissure to the past, and a life lived long ago that he cannot remember, but desperately does not want to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from my journal and FF.net. I've tarted it up the smallest bit, small edits, fixing the flow a little. It's still a bit of a mess. Still, I have a fondness for it, so here it is! I'll post the following parts as I finish with them.

Part One

“So. How have you been, Mark?” Dr. Armstrong's voice is orderly and mellow. Like her office. A place for everything, everything in it's place. 

“Good. Yeah. Good.” Mark was sitting in the chair beside the desk and discreetly wiped his palms on his jeans, and then forced his fingers to lie flat. 

“How was the vacation?” Dr. Armstrong asks, smiling. Like she cares. Like they're friends and it matters.

“Good.” He realized that was a lot of good for the space of a minute and hastens to elaborate. “I, uh, tried what you suggested; just relaxing, no late nights, no parties. Lots of quiet. Bummed around the condo a lot. Swam in the pool, you know.” He didn't think his parents believed he needed the place in Florida just for relaxation, but then, they didn't really care what he got up to, as long as it didn't result in copious property damage. Or him being arrested.

“How did your leg like swimming?”

Mark flicked a look down at the limb in question.

It had healed almost to perfection. He was done with physical therapy, and the doctor was more or less at the 'fuck off, my surgical awesomeness has cured you, bring on the next challenge' point in their relationship. The break had been clean, and healed just as cleanly. Mark had the X-rays to prove it. It seemed like everyone was only too happy to tell him that he'd been lucky. So lucky. He could have a limp. He could be maimed. He could be dead. A big cumbersome cast, and months later his leg came out, skinny and smelly and whole. He didn't even have a fierce scar to frighten small children with, or impress attractive women in bars with extraordinary falsehoods regarding the origin. No. His leg was as it had ever been.

If only it would stop hurting.

“It's still bothering you.” Dr. Armstrong supplied when it went quiet a long time. 

Mark nodded, rubbing his palms on his pants again. He didn't know why Dr. Armstrong made him nervous. Maybe it was the suits. Always black, with these sets of jewelry that matched. Her pen was always poised over the notepad, and her gaze always dipping from him to the paper as she scribbled. He never tried to read her upside down writing. He didn't think he wanted to know.

“What about the dreams? Did you have any while you were gone?” 

Mark nodded.

“Can you tell me about them? Were they different?”

Mark closed his eyes and dredged back. Back when he was freshly awoken, fumbling through thoughts left greasy once passed through wakefulness. He'd known the questions would come, and wished all the quiet and relaxation and borne some fruit. He wished he could say near seclusion was just what he needed. It wasn;t. It hadn't made his leg stop aching, and it hadn't stopped him from starting awake, the bed damp with sweat and he shivering in cold.

For months he'd tried keeping a Dream Journal on the understanding that extended documentation could sharpen clarity, could improve his recall. It had been bullshit. He felt weird writing down his dreams, even when they were ordinary. Like a fifteen year old girl chronicling her acid trips. 

“Nothing new. Same old.” He rubbed the knee. It ached.

Her eyes flick down, then back up to his face. “Does it hurt now?”

He nodded again. Duh.

Dr. Armstrong set her pent down. The abrupt change in stance sent the hairs on Mark's arm prickling. She leaned forward and folded her hands on the desk, over the top of her notes. This was new.

“Mark,” She broached patiently “We've talked about how this pain you are experiencing is psychosomatic. Your doctors can't find any reason for it.”

“My leg hurts.” Mark repeated, knowing he sounded stubborn. He's heard this. It's insulting when Doctors look down their nose at him and tell him he isn't in pain, when some nights he just lies there, pain drowning sleep. They think he just wants the painkillers, or at least one hinted at that. That getting hooked on prescription pills was terrible and how he was glad Mark wasn't going down that hole, because, clearly everything in his leg was fine. Doctors. They'd been wonderful when everything was routine, but now they seemed to think they knew his body better than he did. That all their degrees suddenly meant you were too stupid to interpret the information from your nervous system.

Jesus, when had he become this guy? Catherine used to call him 'her goofy poodle'. He used to be unrelentingly good natured. Now he was just...crabby. It was seriously not right. He was tired of being this way. Tired of hurting for no reason.

“I'm sure it does. We've talked about a lot of things together, this last year, Mark, but I think we can agree that you and I might not find the answers you are seeking.”  
“So, what? You want to get rid of me?” It came out snappier than he meant it, on the heels of insult.

“No. But I do want you to get better; there is something eating at you Mark, and I haven't been successful at getting to the core of it. Part of being a good doctor is to know when your methods aren't working.” She smiled. Probably it was a reassuring smile. Other patients had been assured by it. 

“I want you to go see colleague of mine,” She had the business card already out, he saw. It had been tucked under her pad. She edged it out with her thumb and pushed it across the desk to him. Cindra Thorton. There was a little butterfly next to the name. It made Mark's stomach clench.

He looked up at Dr. Armstrong. “A hypnotherapist?” He couldn't keep the incredulity and disdain from his tones. 

Dr. Armstrong leaned back in her chair. Her expression seemed pointedly bland as she said “You have something against hypnotherapy?”

He didn't mention that it was probably more bullshit than the bullshit he was already forced to endure. He just looked at the little card, saying nothing. Trying to imagine what could be worse than a dream journal.

“I think Cindra might be able to help you find the answers you're seeking, Mark. You just have to be open to it.” Dr. Armstrong said.

“Thanks. I'll think about.” Mark stood, jamming the card into the pocket, since apparently he and Dr. Armstrong were done here.

 

Hypnotherapy. It's all he can think of. A hypnotherapist. His mind is filled with goofy tv shows where hypnotized people strut around like chickens or are forced to forget things they witnessed. Forced to obey, little cartoon people with swirlies for eyes. Not for him.

Not that he actually believes people can be compelled to do things, but Mark has no intention of calling some woman with a butterfly on her business card. Sure, his dad would pick up the tab, as he had Dr. Armstrong's, but that was because he felt bad about his gimp son, and signing a check was a way of showing some parental concern from the deck of a yacht. 

Mark went home, to his apartment. It was spartan, tidy. He didn't know what to do now he had been chucked over by his therapist. Psychologist. Whatever Dr. Armstrong had been. Not the kind that prescribed pills. 

He didn't know what to do. Not just about therapy, or the leg that burst into shuddering agony or low throb as the mood takes it. About any of it. About the brewing dissatisfaction, about the sense that his life should amount to more, somehow. It's not that he's slowly grown unhappy with his lot, not even that since he broke his leg his happiness incrementally decreased. Overnight, it changed. Like he opened his eyes. He'd always liked having money, working for money, and now it seems empty and hollow. No worth. No glory. When he was spinning in a hospital bed, his leg maybe destroyed the sensation that settled over him was of dissatisfaction, as if he'd shed some part of his skin and left unknown things pink and raw.

But he isn't going to call some hypnotherapist so she can tell him his leg hurts because he's dissatisfied and he's just realized that. He knows it. Millions of people walk around dissatisfied, and it doesn't stop them from living. From sleeping.

Besides, it's not the leg that bothers him most of all, it's not the sense that he's working without purpose. It's the dreams.

It's too late to go running, so Mark rustles himself into work-out clothes and walks the two blocks to the twenty four hour gym. He's a member, and ended up choosing that apartment because of it's proximity to the gym. When he can't sleep, or when his mind is restless he comes and he lifts, and if his leg isn't acting up jump-ropes, or uses the machines. He'd gotten flabby, during recovery. Six months sitting on his ass with a cast, not exactly a surprise. He wasn't quite back to the operating condition he was accustomed to being in. Being fit has always been important to Mark.

He works out until his mind is smooth and blank, until there is nothing but the burn of well used muscles. He doesn't rise to the occasion when a blonde in a sports bra strikes up a conversation. She asks him out for coffee and Mark felt nothing, which was a pity, since she was was sporting a pair of tits that were just his favorite kind; full enough to hold onto without loosing the perk. It's not that he doesn't find her attractive, because he watched her stretch out and was not unmotivated in his pants. It's just not...right, somehow.

He returned home, worn enough to dull his mind. He opened a beer and eased himself onto the couch. The hollow apartment fills with the mindless drone of television as he flicked it on then abandoned the remote. There is a thumping from the floor above in protest, so Mark notched the sound down. 

He let his brain ooze. Ignored the crumpled business card on the table. Pledges to forget about going into work tomorrow and the path he cannot find and what the fuck he has against beautiful women with nice tits that want to fuck him. 

He watched things he wasn't really interested in. Sitcom re-runs. Endless commercials for cellular phones. Infomercials.

Determined to stay awake, Mark didn't know when he dipped into sleep. Only that he is there, in the throng of it. Sounds thunder around him, and he knows there are horses here, and men. Each shouts and screams in the chaotic frenzy that is battle. The rattle and clang of weapons is all around him. There is a sword in his hand, and he knows the grip intimately. He knows how to use it. He knows battle. He knows this hideous mess, just as he thinks it should be more orderly, with trained troops formed in shapes. Not this melee. There is no leader shouting commands. Just a seething knot of men trying to end one and other in hasty furor. How many are injured by their own comrades in the frenzy? It's undisciplined. 

Opponents lunge for him and he dispatches them with ease, their faces nothing but feature-less smudges that fall away. Men keep coming for him, armed with the weapons of ages past, but they don't daunt him. It isn't the fight and his probable demise that have fear blooming in his chest. It is something else. Some fervent need that lays on his chest like a granite block. A need that lingers when he wakes. A need that sits on his chest at all hours, even the ones he tries to press it away at the gym or at work. A need that has been with him a year, now.

He didn't always slip into the dream so easy. While the emotion it left him with on waking has been constant, it's been slow, coming this far.

At first it was just him standing, holding a blade, sensation a vague echo. And that feeling. The need to do or to find, the fear of this unknown need left undone choking him.

Then he was on the battlefield, bodies crashing against each other, first in slow motion, then in gradually richer detail. And the need was worse because he felt the danger.

By now he was moving through the sea as it churned around him. No matter how clear it became, purpose was always resounding through his body, and in the dream he understood it.

A horse falls before him, shrieking as the rider's hands flail. He blocks, but his body, always so strong and reliable, feels as if he is running through peanut butter. His leg hurts when he twists away and it almost buckles under his weight. It hampers him. He would be moving with sleek ease if not for the way it hobbled him. He compensates and he must, must surge through the bottleneck of people. He must find-!

A man lunges for him. A war-hachet flies across his vision. He finds position easily, even as he searches, his mind occupied, his body knows what to do. He's crippled, but they underestimate him. He can see the embankment ahead of him- if he can get through this man, and the next and then...

He blocks with his shield. Vibrations. Then he's stabbing, chopping at the man, hewing meat and bone from the obstacle and as one goes down another steps into his place.

Mark awoke on a yell of pained frustration, his leg singing in agony. He'd sagged to his stomach on the couch, the beer bottle sweating on the coffee table. The call was desperate and seeking, and Mark doesn't know why, only that he hurts, from the inside out. 

 

“Mark Waterman.” Cindra Thorton has a dreamy quality to her voice, a low thrum. She takes his hand. Hers are very warm.

They go into her office, a space that is small and dim. It doesn't look as dippy as Mark thought it would. There are no wind chimes or statues of angels. Just a bowl of fancy polished rocks and a reclining leather armchair with a blanket folded across the back. He choose to sit in the waiting-room type chair across from the desk instead of the armchair.

They sit for a pointedly long time in silence. Cindra just looks at him. She must be fifty, with squinty glasses and a long braid going gray she hasn't bothered to dye.

“What would you like to tell me?” She asks at last.

Mark stopped himself from rubbing his fingers over his eyes. He knew she must have read the paperwork he meticulously filled out, not the official ones about payment, but the other, essay ones. The pages asking him what he wanted to achieve through hypnosis, otherwise what would be the point of him writing them? To assure themselves of his conviction.

Still. Being polite would be a good choice.

“My leg hurts. Everyone says it's in my head; I broke it on a run upstate last year, when a hillside gave way. I had to wait in the ravine, in the river until someone else came along. Now it's healed, perfectly, according the doctors, but it hurts...And I have this dream... and I keep thinking that none of this is right.” Mark summarized. He doesn't mean it to be rude, and he hopes the weariness of it all seeps into this woman. He can't really say how farting around at his Dad's firm now seems a purposeless exorcize because he has the feeling there should be more. It sounds too much like he looked death in the face and found himself, a useless playboy, wanting, and that is not it.

“I see you wrote 'this is not about my parents being terminally uninterested in me'.” Cindra said. She held up the page with the detailed questions. Well. At least she had read it. Her softly lined face had an open, encouraging look about it, wordlessly prompting Mark to talk more about this tidbit.

“Everyone goes right to the Daddy and Mommy issues. This has nothing to do with them. They are the biological contributors who created me. I was raised by good people who did love me, despite the paycheck they were given for my welfare. I know that. I don't want to waste time examining it.” Mark said.

She didn't write anything down, but looked at him again for a long time before asking questions. Some of them are the same as Dr. Armstrong's. Who. What. Where. Why. How. He answers, trying hard not to be curt.

Mark isn't precisely sure how he ended up reclined in the chair with the blanket covering the latter part of his body. One thing led to another, and he found himself listening to her sleepy, nonfluctuating voice, guiding him down stairs into a deep-sleep mode. He wasn't really sure that he was under, despite her prior reassurances that she would be looking for signs. If he was under, how could he question he was under? He still feels present, except slightly sluggish. Every dramatic representation of hypnosis Mark had seen featured people who remembered nothing of their time under, but he's here and doubting.

But... Mark finds when she asks him questions, answers bubble from the back of his mind. It's different than searching for the answer, than thinking and analyzing, it's more instinctual. As if they've always been there, but now he has access.

They don't do anything very strenuous. Cindra familiarizes herself with him. She suggests that his mind be open, and assures him that this deep sleep place was one of safety and security. 

She asks him to find a special place in his mind. A place where he is safe. At once there comes the image of a riverbed in a glen, not unlike the one he spent five miserable November hours waiting in, half pinned under a tree. It's greener. Lush. Colder. Icy water rushes through stones, and above trees blot out most of the sun. It fills his mind, almost unexpectedly, this unseen place. It is a special place, for some reason. It's enough to make him feel strangely calm, a calm that lasts for hours after he leaves the office.  
It's part of why he made another appointment, and then another.

He wanted to think it's bullshit, but reserved his opinion. Now he doesn't know. He doesn't know why answers flutter to his lips when he is under. That's the thing he hates about hypnosis. It isn't easy. It's not like opening a book and reading what your subconscious has written down. Sometimes he knows answers, but doesn't know why. Sometimes he doesn't know the answers, but does know why. Yet even more times, the answers only bring more questions. He finds himself shedding silent tears unexpectedly while under. It's embarrassing. 

The weeks pass. Things are different. Something was happening to him, even if he wasn't sure what it is. 

One day Cindra takes him down stairs, more stairs than ever before. Deeper and deeper down, until his feet are heavy as stone, and even though Mark knows he still has feet, he honestly did not think he could move them. 

They go to his special place. He doesn't think of it as a joke anymore. She asks him to tell her about it again, even though he's described it to her a couple of times already. He does. He tells her about the trees, and the water, and the high breath of wind through the trees, the pebbly feeling of the stones under his feet.

“Who are you, when you see this place?” She asks.

What? She knew who he was. 

But his mouth answers, not with permission from his conscious mind.

“I am Marcus Flavius Aquila.” Mark hears himself say.

That isn't his name. If he wasn't under, he knew he would be terrified, but he's warm, and calm and safe. The Novocaine on parts of his brain won't let him be scared.

Cindra's voice is soothing. “What's wrong with your leg, Marcus?”

“I am lamed. I was wounded in the service of Rome.” It's like he's speaking, but he isn't.

“Are you a Roman Soldier?” 

“Yes. No.” Both answers are right. They bring emotion. Disappointment. Pride. It swells in his chest until he's distracted by Cindra's voice once more.

“Marcus, the time when you lived is long passed. You lived and have died. You aren't Marcus any more. You're Mark, and though Mark needed your strength, Marcus, it is time to let go. You must let the pain of your leg go. You don't need it. It is passed. That is Marcus' pain, Mark. Let the pain go.”

“No. I cannot.” 

“You cannot what?”

“Let the pain go.”

“Why can't you let it go?”

“...” He falters, but the answer is there. “I need...so...I'll remember.”

“What do you need to remember?”

Mark surfaces like something is pulling him, dragging him to the surface before he was out of air, leaving things unanswered. Not like when Cindra eases him back. It's harsh and hard because he knows there is something to remember. He knows that deep inside himself is the something. 

Cindra just smiles. These things take time, she says. This is really excellent progress. He should be really pleased. He should even be happy to know there are answers, even if he can't get to them yet.

 

☼

Not only is an unfamiliar name jarred free from the caverns of his mind. The dream, the battle in which he desperately fights toward an embankment explodes into rich detail. 

It lingers so close Cindra can dip him into it. Like today.

He's agitated, swimming through the pictures he realizes must be memories, and not boogeymen peopled with extras from Braveheart and Gladiator. Memories from some other time and place, when he was named Marcus Flavius Aquila and he was a Roman Centurion. When he inhales Mark can smell it. Dirt. Dust. Sweat. Horse. Manure. Leather and the sweet metal and wet scent that is spilled blood, the sharp stink that is spilled gore. 

In the real world Mark knows the fingers of his sword hand are twitching atop his knee but he can't make that stop. He doesn’t know how much he is saying out loud, only that the mumble of information is constant, that as he sees images, their description spills from his mouth. As he lives it half thoughts that float across his mind drip from his lips.

He isn't frightened for himself, even though his leg throbs. A centurion shouldn't be afraid of combat. And he's not. He's faced battle before. Would accept the will of a higher power, were he to fall in battle, that is not the source of the fear. He's afraid for the thing unremembered. The condition of it pinches his heart tender.

“What are you looking for, Marcus?” It's a voice from above, prompting as he scans the shaky, indistinct horizon. It's just over there. Not that many steps now. He just has to pass along the dirt field, the skim down the embankment. 

A body slams into his. Jarring. No, a shield. There is a scream of foul breath and he wields his sword. He circles his opponent, frustrated because he doesn't have time for this. 

“What are you looking for, Marcus?”

He's supporting the corpse, his sword buried into the gut. Wetness floods over his belly, hot. He shoves the corpse away. It tumbles with a cloud of dust. He jumps over it.

He can't see! There is sweat in his eyes, and the world is listing and he's trying not to panic. He's never come so far in, before. He skims to the top of the embankment, but there's a horrible, new feeling in his gut. It boils and sears him, and he's crying. A feeling that as much as he wants to run down and shove men away from the embankment, from the doorway to the stone house Mark now knows is there, he won't want to know what was beyond, but he has to go anyway. Must go see, because he must be there.

Mark's scanning, searching through the bodies, through the figures, looking, heart shuddering. He can't find him. By Mithras, where is he?

It rips out of him. A scream. “Esca! ESCA?”

He's out. Shot out of hypnosis. Shuddering and his face wet. It's humiliating. His heart is frantic in his ears. He throws off the blanket because he's sweating so badly it smothers him, then claps his hands over his chest. They're shaking too, so he digs them into his flesh.

It's still in his nose. The smell of it. The adrenaline of combat sings through him and he wants to think it's all bullshit, bullshit except that he knows it's not. Something in him longs, a keen ache rent open by a name.

“I'm not gay,” He says when he can summon breath and the will to make words. They sound strangely sullen. Defensive.

Cindra just looks at him.

“I'm not!”

“I didn't say you were, Mark. Judgment has no place here. You were on a battlefield. You could be searching for a comrade. A brother. A father.”

He can't stay. He can't stay and be with a past centuries dead that creeps up on him. He makes to get up, but Cindra holds up a hand.

“Just rest a minute.”

He doesn't want to, but he realizes his knees are like liquid. He doesn't slide back into the embrace of the chair, but holds his hands behind the neck of his down turned head. They sit in silence until Cindra began to speak.

“Emotions from past lives can be difficult. Sometimes when we die, we have regrets or feelings we don't shed from one life to the next, so we bring them with us. We might not even know they are there, until something reminds us of them.” He can feel her eyes on his leg, “I think Marcus Flavius Aquila had a wounded leg, and when you broke yours, that same leg, some chain to the past came to the surface. Now Marcus' unfinished life is troubling you.”

He rubbed his knee. It didn't hurt now. All during the session it ached in a back burner way, but now lay silent. As if this was a relief to it. He lifted his head to look at Cindra.

She looked completely calm. Maybe she was at ease with all this nonsense about past lives. Past lives. Oh, fuck how ridiculous does that sound?

“It's important for you to know that you are safe, that Esca is safe. That these are long past memories that you can let go.” Cindra said.

“Let go?” Mark said, his brow furrowing. 

“Yes. You are not Marcus anymore. Marcus' life came to its end. It's alright to let those feelings pass, and move on with your life here and now.”

 

He lay in bed that night, reflecting. His leg didn't hurt. Could a name have chased away pain? Had it all truly been in his head? Was this person all in his head too? Some phantom he was making up?

He rolled. Esca. The name was strange, and though he wracked his brain and demanded that hidden part divest itself of its secrets about the foreign name, no image came to his mind's eye. He couldn't form a face to match the name. Marcus, if he existing, was silent on the matter of the mystery male.

And he knew it was a male. The name could have been ambiguous, but Mark knew it was a man he had been desperately seeking. A fierce and loyal one. Small. Someone who made something tender bend in Marcus that was definitely not platonic. From the time spent in those foggy memories Mark knew Marcus was frantic for someone who lived inside his heart the way a lover did.

Marcus was a big gay dope.

“You're Marcus.” Mark reminds himself in the dark.

It was strange to think about. He'd never been into men. Not even as a curiosity. Not as a proximity and availability allowance during puberty. He'd been in enough locker rooms to know the sight of a male nude body didn't race his motor. He liked women. He slept with women and never imagined they were men.

He'd tried an appraising look at the men on the street when he was driving home from his appointment with Cindra. The tinted windows maintained his dignity, but try as he might he hadn't felt anything for any of the figures jogging or strolling. Could he be gay in one life and straight in the next? Or was he a bisexual? Maybe since it was a part of your DNA, you flipped back and forth as genetics commanded. Fuck, it was all so confusing.

Another roll, onto his stomach and he groaned into his pillow. If someone had told him months ago that past lives were real, that he would be believing in them, he might have laughed in their face. He pulled a pillow over his head to block out the world and tried to sleep. 

This was hard because the world left him in peace. It was his own body that was rebelling.

“Let it go.” He ordered himself. 

Somehow, his leg managed to make the absence of pain seem pointed. 

“I'm not going to think about it.” He told himself, and the dark. And his leg. He stubbornly planted his mind on a business meeting he had on the other end of the weekend, running through the tiniest inane points of it in the most minute detail.

When he slept he had a regular dream. He was insanely glad for it.

 

It was freer, somehow. He found himself moving through the apartment of a Saturday with actual goals in mind for the day instead of distractions to edge him through it. He put all the weirdness into a little box in his brain and set it aside. He paid bills. He cleaned. He answered email. He went grocery shopping.

“You certainly sound better,” said Catherine on the phone at mid-day. “You were getting pretty maudlin there. Are you still in therapy?”

“Yeah. New therapist. It's good. It's different. At first I didn't want to go, but I'm glad I did.”

“That's great Mark. Do you think you'll be up to come to my birthday thing? I'd really love it if you can, but if you can't, I'll understand.”

Mark always wanted to oblige her. She's always been there for him, after all. “Where is it this year?”

“Hawaii. Scuba diving.”

Mark's hesitation had Catherine rushing to fill the void.

“You don't have to dive. I mean, some of the kids don't. Just come. Relax. There will be luaus and dancing and tropical drinks with little umbrellas. All the best stuff. There will be a hotel spa- you could get a massage for the leg and a facial since you have been looking haggard.”

Mark shifted his weight. Actually, the leg hadn't made nary a peep. Not all day. Without being premature, he was pleased. Then he processed her words. “Wait. Haggard?”

“Do you prefer broodsomely worn?”

“Gee, how you flatter.”

“Telling it like it is, babe, and you are wiped. I know you did your monk retreat solitary confinement thing in Miami a while back, but maybe this could be a 'Pampercation'?” She sounded so hopeful, if she was forgetting that Mark was not a woman who found the notion of a spa irresistible.

“Who's coming to this birthday thing?” Mark said instead.

“Oh, everyone!” She was happy to spout off not only the guest list, but some gossip relating to persons on it. He liked hearing her steady enthusiasm, even if the words blurred a bit. A lot of the people he only saw once a year at Catherine's parties, even though he'd gone to the same prep school and college as they had. Some of them were part of a social circle that cycled through Catherine's life. She liked people, and people liked her. People liked Mark, too. They always remembered his name, were always happy to see him. Catherine once told him it was because he was 'obscenely likeable'.

After bending his ear on all their mutual acquaintances romances, divorces, offspring updates, financial woes and she naturally floated to a new topic, forgetting she had not extracted an agreement from him. Chattering Catherine, and all he has to do is make a few noises of assent or disbelief and she was happy. It was what he wanted. Something normal. Something simple. However, he always underestimates her. Catherine has been a friend since childhood, never a romantic interest and she knows him, even though she can be a bit garrulous .

“So...When are we going to talk, Mark?” Sober tones redirected his attention.

“Aren't we talking? I've heard about half the population of New York by now.”

“Really talk. About, like, important stuff.”

“I seem to remember quite a bit about your ex-fiance, there. And my monkish- and I'm sure this isn't a word- broodsomeness.”

“The stuff that is making you broody.” She said, and then fell silent, waiting him out. 

Mark sighed. Why did he always thing he was home free?

“It's...complicated. And it's weird.” he said.

“This is why you need friends. To make it simple and accept the weird.”

“This is...weirder than usual.”

He doesn't tell her. He will, someday. Just not now. The things running around his head are too loony for him to take seriously, and he can't imagine vocalizing them would make them sound any more credible, especially the 'Hey, guess what, I may have been this Roman gay guy with a lot of issues once, but not any more, clearly, except for this guy I am totally hung up on from that life and the fact that he had issues is giving me some issues' part. 

Catherine wouldn't make fun, he was pretty sure of that much. Still. He could hardly tell her he was missing some dude from beyond the grave; it wasn't something he was comfortable with. She'd ask him if he was gay, and he'd say no, like he'd been saying no to himself, but she'd have doubts, because, how could she not? He had doubts.  
He didn't go back to see Cindra the following week. Or the next. Neither did he have any more dreams that awoke him alert and seeking. The pain in his leg didn't come back either, even when he tried jogging on it one morning. He'd missed this morning constitution. Sure, he kept in shape in the gym, but running was different. You were actually going somewhere, blowing the clouds from your head, letting your feet take over. He didn't even hold a grudge with the running path that had landed him in this mess, though he was sticking with city streets and pedestrian parks.

He put any and all thoughts relating to the entire business into a box in his mind. He locked it tight. The issue has simply moved from his unconscious, where it loomed uncontrolled in dreams, into his conscious, and that he could control. He did not think about who the man he was hung up on was, and what regrets Marcus may have had. It was past, dead, and had no place in his life now. He was Mark Waterman, and he had a life an a job that needed attention. This life.

It was mostly successful, this mental banishment. Except in little unguarded moments. While he was reading the ingredients on a prepackaged smoothie. As he banged out mind-numbing reports at work. As he fell asleep. It would slip in, and Mark would find himself trying to picture this person, trying to fit him into molds, casting him into faces, like trying to find an actor to fit a role. What was his nose like? His hands? Mark would shove it viciously way when he realized he was trying to paint some picture, angry at himself for slipping. He'd have to start his No Past Live's Thoughts record count over. He never made it more than three days. It always came back. 

Esca. Someone calling to him across death and time. No. Not calling. Someone tearing at him with fingernails. 

It frightened him. Because whoever this person was, he didn't have psychic X-Man powers to break into Mark's brain. Esca wasn't doing anything. Esca was dead a thousand years or more. Esca, if past lives existed, could be anywhere in the world, and he she or it wouldn't remember Mark or Marcus.It was Mark himself who wanted something of this man, whatever part of him was Marcus, which was as good as himself, because wasn't he him?

He redoubled his efforts not to think about it. Mental discipline was all it took. Not meditation, that made the thoughts come forward, but work helped. Lots of work, and running. In a month, distractions aside, things were good. His leg didn't bloom into pain. He didn't dream, not at all. He was cured. He didn't resent his job, he loved his job! It made lots of money. Money wasn't bad. Maybe the business wasn't grand or charitable, but banking was an honorable profession.

Most of all, Mark didn't wonder about the face. He didn't want to screw men, he picked up women and took them home where he forgot about stuff as long as there were two bodies tangled in the sheets. He was good. He was happy. That was all there was to it.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some tense issues still abound. The original was a mess.

Six months later...

Mark jogged every morning, now. He followed his feet, which meant he could take a familiar track, or find a totally new route, when his mind wandered and he didn't pay attention to where he was going. The world was repairing itself, and he was quick to constantly remind himself it felt good to be falling into a few old patterns. He'd missed jogging, first with his leg broken, and then with it hurting. Now he was back. Everything was good. Normal.

This morning was overcast. Not really wet, just gray and sloppy. He rounded the corner in the park, taking the path back toward the street. It was Saturday, but he still planned to spend the afternoon in the office. It kept his mind off things. The sound of the air traveling through his body shuddered under the music thrumming from his iPod. When his mind threatened to bleed, he forced himself to think of financial strategies. Upcoming meetings.

Everything was good. In fact, he'd been putting in such an effort at work, putting in so many hours his father had seemed honestly pleased. Liam McBride, his semi-rival, was less pleased. He'd been headhunted from somewhere else, had come to Watermann and Grange only a few years ago. For unknown reasons Liam had taken an instant dislike to Mark,and took great pleasure repeatedly showing off how much more successful he was at the job. Whereas Mark used to 'catch' Laim implying all of Mark's promotions were nepotism, and not the result of labor, now when they passed each other in the halls or at the break room, Liam just glared sullenly. For a while he'd tried to match Mark's hours, but he had a family (Mark knew this because of the silver framed picture on his desk) and he soon surrendered.

Mark didn't dream about battlefields and death. Sometimes there were dreams he couldn't remember, dreams that made him feel tender and longing, but it was easy to throw them aside. He couldn't remember them, what was there to dwell on?

So everything was good. He wasn't thinking about the past. Everything was good. Normal.

It was his new chant.

He didn't know what happened first, as he jogged. He suspected he saw the sign first, and his knee bloomed in thudding agony for the first time in months. He gave a muffled cry of pain and frustration. His even jogging gait wavered, and he had to slow to a stop. He made his way to a bench, supporting himself on it and cursing so hard a woman escorted a little girl away while throwing him a dirty look.

He shook his leg and even bounced on it, as if that would force the ache away

"Don't do this!" He snapped at the limb. “We're done with this! No more! I'm good, I'm fine!”

It's what people who loose remission must feel- desperately clawing the bright light of wellness to stay while it melts into the night, unable to combat the command of nature.  
He cursed again, lower and under his breath, limp- pacing from one bench across the way to the other, trying to walk it into nothingness. It didn't work. He collapsed into one and cupped his head. He hardly felt the cold in his ass for the heat of the pain. He gained his breath, eyes squeezed shut before looking up to see.

It's attached to a light post, one of those vertical banners cities use. A lot of them, one after the other flanking the wide central avenue that cuts through the middle of the park. They alternate one with an empty eyed marble bust on a background of mosaic tiles and another with a sword and circular shield. 'The Artifacts of Rome' each reads, a traveling exhibit for the Museum of Man, and the dates.

"Jesus, I know," He muttered to his leg, then tried to sooth the muscle. "I hear you." 

He doesn't know much, but he knows Marcus had been a Roman Centurion. A long ass time ago Roman Centurion. Even though he'd tried to forget the name, Marcus Flavius Aquila was burned into the back of his brain.

It was if his feet wouldn't listen to him, and he began to walk. The museum wasn't far. A few blocks. They passed in a twinkling. He forgot he was in sweaty jogging clothes, the cord to his ipod wrapped around his neck. He paid admission and was inside as soon as the doors were opened, before the families could get organized enough to even leave their homes. True enough, the exhibition was empty. That was good. He didn't want to be swamped by tiny people who smelled like Cheetos and bananas while pursuing his personal demons.

What he wouldn't give to just have had his parents be killed so the whole thing could be rectified by putting on a rubber suit, driving a bad-ass car and beating the shit out of criminals with cool weapons. He wasn't even vain enough to need the signal.

He wanted it to be familiar, the corroded and worn items propped in glass cases and the dummies in recreated fashion and antique jewelry. There were television screens which read out information and a big interactive display that showed the chronological progress of the Roman army's conquests across the known world, and then their withdrawal as the empire collapsed. He wanted to find some piece that struck a bell inside him, but nothing did. Nothing about the Roman Republic or senate, or the great archeological feats, or even the army made him feel anything. Even the decline didn't inspire any feelings. Sure it was all familiar in that 'Gee, I think I learned that once,' way, but none of it is personal. None of it nudged Marcus out of the stupor Mark had banished to, or inspired him to hand over any fucking clues. Clues that Mark just pretended he didn't want because he thought he was over Over OVER it.

By the time he got home, Mark had caved. He shouldn't have gone in. He shouldn't have let it out of the box he tried taping up inside him. Did he let it out, or did the tape burst? Stupid Pandora.

Thankfully, Amazon shipped over night,

The covers of the collection of books he ordered, were hokey, especially those of the more popular selections. Clouds and mystic women and healing crystals on a lot of them. Inside there are a lot of false promises and out-right malarkey, mystical prose and talk of spirit guides. He threws three different mainstream books against the wall in frustration before switching over to authors who had some kind of an education to their name.

He'd never been great in school, not without Catherine dragging him through what felt pointlessly academic rather than the immediately prudent which he's always been competent at. The abstract and the past just aren't, or, haven't been, his thing. He's always been a here and now guy.

He waded through chapters on 'Past Life Regression', the potential for healing, and lots of case studies of people who remembered being children locked in Victorian closets who were no longer claustrophobic when the past life revealed itself. He learned a lot, not all of it relevant, but mostly the authors concured that the past should be put to bed, and that people who died violently or unfairly had a better chance of holding onto those memories. Apparently if you remembered you died trapped in a fire, that made you okay with it.  
It sounded backwards, really.

As informative as it all was, this wasn't what Mark wanted. He needed to settle something with Esca, with himself. He didn't know what. Or how. In fact, in light of his new swath of information, if you believed in rebirth, Esca could be an orphan running through the streets of Cairo, a middle aged banker in Shang-hai or a ninety two year old widow with seventeen grandchildren in Finland. He could be anywhere. He could be anyone. He certainly didn't remember Marcus Flavius Aquila. Mark wasn't supposed to remember Marcus. No one was supposed to remember being some dude with a broom on his head in a long ass time ago Rome.

But... that was a thought. Did anyone else remember him? Wasn't history basically all about dead dudes? Did history remember Marcus Flavius Aquila? Wait, was it the Romans who were all pissed at Jesus? No one could remember if Jesus was really a dude who really was, if Marcus Flavius Aquila was born before Jesus, what were the odds? It wasn't like he was an emperor with his name carved onto everything.

The internet didn't have anything to say about Marcus. Or Esca. Over the weekend Mark scoured it, searching through dozens of Marcuses with similar names, reading dense historical PDF files until his eyes burned.

He called in sick on Monday and drove to New York to visit the library, but at the end of hours digging had nothing to show for it. He returned downhearted, but not defeated. He might have missed something, it wasn't as if he was a scholar.

When Mark hadn't left his apartment in nine days and was surviving on order-in Chinese surrounded by any detailed book on Roman Centurions he could get his hands on, he realized this method was futile. His head was swimming with names, dates, suppositions and tiny details of archeological digs. It just didn't mean anything to him. Searching the indexes got him nowhere. And he had to know. He read books, a bag of frozen peas propped on his knee. When he fell to sleep, the dream of the battlefield had returned, but not alone. Sometimes he dreamed of a darkness, wide and endless, but for the orange light of a campfire. In that bubble of hot orange light, across the flames which leapt too high for him for him to see, someone sat. They just sat together. Unspeaking These dreams made him long.

But, here he was, fumblingly blindly. The most recent book lay closed on his lap, and he stared at it, thumb tracing the author. An idea came to him.

Professor Reginald Halliwell was an archeologist who was also a professor on sabbatical from the UK, the internet happily told him. This was more opportune than making an international call to Italy since Mark didn't have a word of Italian to his name. He had a better chance getting what he wanted from an English speaker.

"Marcus Flavius Aquila? Is this for a book or something?" The reedy voice was speculative.

Mark said "Or something. I know he was a centurion, but I haven't been able to find any record of him."

"Well, of course not. I've never heard of him, and I would have, believe me. There aren't extensive records about specific Centurions. Where did you get the name?"

"It's not important. " Mark pursed his lips. “But, you've never heard of it?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Is there anyone else who might? Another professor I could contact?”

“Mr. Waterman, I assure you, they will not know any more than I do and it is not a name with which I am familiar.”

Mark had a feeling he'd stepped on a nerve. 

"What about the name Esca?" he said.

"Esca? Not Roman. Probably has it's roots in a Celtic language."

"Celtic? Like, Irish?"

"Perhaps. Variations of it would have been spoken in Britain, into Gaul- France, that is, Germany, even as far down as Spain. Most region variations have died out of course, and it's a debated issue about where what was spoken when. No Celt speakers left written records; we know what we know from Greek and Roman accounts and writing done in the middle ages."

Mark didn't find this has made things any clearer. "I know this is a little strange, thank you for your patience. Could I ask you a hypothetical?” 

There was a pause, the professor said. “Proceed.”

“Would you happen to know what a Roman Centurion would be doing with a Celtic-speaker?" He asked, trying to sound something between non-nonchalant and interested at a respectable distance.

"Killing him probably." 

Mark almost choked.

"Many tribes were wiped out by Roman advancement. Barring that, his family could have been Romanized, or his tribe aligned with Rome and eventually swallowed up. More likely, a Celtic speaker in continued contact with a Roman was a slave."

"Esca is not a slave!" The words were out of his mouth before Mark could temper their verve, or even understood why the notion sent heat searing across his chest. There was stunned silence on the other end and then a 'Goodness, Sir' or something like it that was equally British and mildly miffed.

"I'm sorry, I just got a little- I'm sorry. Uh, Thank you for your time." Mark disconnected, then thrust the heels of his hands into his eyes.

This was stupid. So stupid.

He stretched on the couch, almost pulled into the fetal position.

This wasn't his thing. History and reading about people and places he could have cared less about a year ago. He didn't like how it had crept so far inside him.

"Leave me alone, just... leave me alone," He murmured to his own brain and he imagined a faceless ghost raising a brow at him.

"Who's stalking who, then?"

 

The weather was crisp and cold. The fields were green, with craggy rocks studding the undulations of land. There was the smell of heather, though he had never known the scent to place a name to it. It just is. Like so many of his dreams.

"I'm looking for you," He said to the water color figure who reclined not far from where Mark stretched on his back. The sun was weak, but warm for the place and the time. Horses are tied somewhere, eating clover. His horses. He can hear them, the rattle of their exhalations, the groans, the clop of feet.

“Why?" Esca wanted to know. He was just a shape, and though Mark knew how and where he moved, and even what expression he was making, he couldn't see Esca. Couldn't have said what shapes made up the man.

"I don't know. It's not done, I don't think."

"We're dead. That seems done enough." Esca picked up a stone, hefted the weight then sent it flying. There might be a splash that followed, Mark wasn't sure.

"Then why won't it go away?" Mark asked imploringly.

"You're clingy?" Esca said, the suggestion tinged with a thickness Mark knew was Esca hiding his amusement.

"No one has ever called me clingy." Especially not the last few women who he's taken home for the night and then doesn't call. He's really lucky none of them have turned up on his door-step to cut off his balls.

Esca dragged a shoulder up in a half shrug. "Masochist?" he said next.

"I'm not stupid. Whatever- Whoever we were we aren't any more. It's not about picking up something that existed between two people we haven't been in a thousand years."

"So why rub it in, masochist?"

A gusty sigh. "Not rubbing it in. I just...I don't know. I feel like I need to do something."

Mark felt a breeze rush them. It smelled clean. Cleaner than anything else, from a time when the world was newer and humans were just beginning to learn they could lay claim to it.

"I think...I miss you. Not just now. Always. I just didn't know it was you I was missing until now. But I won't confuse that with expectations." Mark said when the silence stretched and stretched.

"Sappy." Chiding, but affectionate.

"You could be more helpful," Mark said.

"Not sure how I can do that. You know I'm not here. Is this even me? Is this who I was then? Or who you think I would be now? Maybe who you imagine I was then is just something you made up.”

“I don't know. A little of everything?”

“Searching for a fantasy is a good way to get yourself crushed. That doesn't even take into account if this is something that's meant to be done. People die and forget and start over for a reason."

Mark looked up at the sky. It was gray and sketched with fuzzy clouds.

"This is really philosophical for my head. I used to just dream about winning the Superbowl. And cheerleaders."

"Jock."

"I just...I don't know what to do. I don't like this."

"Then stop it."

Mark doesn't want to do that, either.

They sat, and the wind bit, but he doesn't seem to be able to move. Not even when he suspected that it had begun to rain.

Mark woke up shivering and he hated it. Hated how he longed, was sick to be so wrapped up in a face he didn't know, and probably wouldn't ever see again. The face of some fantasy man. Jesus, maybe he was gay. Esca hits too hard, dead center of the chest.

He hated how he knew once Esca came back for him, and it's his turn, against all odds, to return to Esca. He hated how parts of his mind seem to taunt him with tidbits of information, hated the way there was a glimpse and then it was gone.

 

"I don't want to let go, I don't want to go to my happy place, I just want to find him. He's in here, and you have to get him out for me." Mark said without prelude, jamming a finger at his temple. Cindra flinched a little at the sudden vehemence in him, and he would normally back down and apologize for scaring her, since, after all, he's a big musclebound guy. People are scared of big men when they get angry. He knows this, usually, but just now he can't make room for that thought.

"I can't think, I can't breath. Maybe if I know it will stop and I can pick up whatever pieces there are left to have."

He threw himself into the leather armchair.

"Show me Esca,"

"Mark, I'm not sure that this is a good idea." She said in the mellow water-against-the-shore soothing tones.

"I don't care. You can take me, or I'll find someone else. You'll get paid. Didn't you say no one can force you to do anything you don't want to do in hypnosis? Well, I don't want to let go."

They go down and he goes deep, only this time he wants to go, he strains for it, deeper and deeper, down. Relaxing, his toes, his calves his knees... down the stairs. His thighs, his stomach..his chest...into a deeper state of relaxation...fingers uncurling, arms loosening, relaxing... deeper still...his neck, his face, his scalp...deep sleep.

"Mark, let's go to your special place. Do you remember it? Good. Tell me about it.”

It was the same as it was before, his special place, but he tells her again about trees, the water, the green of the glen.

“I want you to turn around, and look behind you. Marcus is there. Can you see him? He's standing in the water, just a few feet away. He's in his uniform, the uniform of a Roman soldier and his helmet. Can you see him?”

Yes. Yes he could.

“Good. I want you to walk up to him and look him in the eyes. Look into him. Feel him. He's you. Now, Mark, I want you to step inside him."

He nodded. Or, maybe it was Marcus. Mark, Marcus, was there a difference?

"Can you tell me where you first saw Esca?"

He can.

A small arena that swam before his eyes, not the kind of giant stone Colosseum in the movies, but little and wooden and muddy. He was being moved, hands helping him, at his elbows, his waist. His leg hurt. His leg hurt because he was injured. Injured and discharged. All of him hurt. He's used up, never to reclaim family honor. He's failed Rome. Failed his father. If he ever had something besides a debt, it's gone now. Now there is only debt he will never pay. Honor he will never reclaim. All his life, his name will bring sidelong looks, and whispers.

"Marcus, focus. Look for Esca. What do you see?"

He saw the crowd rippling, milling. A gladiator with the mask of Janus entered the ring with a flourish. The crowd cheered. The gladiator circled the ring, soaking up the praise.

This was Esca? No. It wasn't. He felt it at once, eyes searching the crowd.

The Janus Gladiator's opponent entered the ring and Mark's and Marcus' heart constricted.

That is Esca. They know it. He is lean and wiry and small. Bronze haired and scowling. Dirty. He's shoved in, a slave, a Briton. Marcus thought he was too small to be there, that it was unfair. Unsporting. 

A tinny voice talked beside him, but he couldn't hear it. All he could see was that lonely, hostile little figure who will not dance for the pleasure of the masses. Who looked at the people who saw him as meat-toy for their amusement right in the face. Who accepted his death with courage and dignity. Who was struck to the ground and still rose to die on his feet until the crowd's favor was lost. 

It was not love at first sight, but it's something so jaggedly close that there just wasn't any air. Marcus has been looked at like he was nothing before, and he knows what it is to be valued only for the accomplishments of his sword. Marcus had accepted that as his only route for redemption. Now even that sole capacity to fulfill his obligation has been taken from him. What else was there? Not just for him, but for that slave down there, who was as trapped as he. Surely there had to be more. Surely there was a way out.

No one even expected the Briton to win on the slightest chance. He was there to die, to thrill the masses with his desperate struggle for life while the Gladiator plunged repeated holes in him so the spectators could feel more alive through his death. So the Romans could be reminded that it is they who dominate the Britons, they who have favor with the gods. Esca won't give them that satisfaction, and though he looked for a clean kill he was not defeated, not ground down. He was not a subjugated symbol.

And Marcus? How could he sit there and let a light so brilliant go out? How can he let someone he feels such kinship and admiration for perish? If there was no way out for the Briton, then there was no way out for Marcus. Was not valor of value? Dignity? Courage? Strength? Pride? This man had all these things, though he was a slave. Was honor all? Were they, he and that slave, of nothingness because their honor was stripped of them by forces greater than they?

No. There must be a way out. There must be more. How can Marcus let this man die? 

And so he doesn't.

 

Cindra wouldn't let Mark come the next day. He was going against her advice anyway, she said, so if they were doing this, they would do it at a pace she deemed healthy. She wouldn't let him come back until Thursday. Waiting was torment. Liam McBride was back to looking smug and self satisfied, now that Mark could hardly focus at work. Mark hated his job, but now he knew why; there was no honor in it. That was a lesson Marcus had learned. It was not enough to be grand, to be glorious. What was more important was to behave with honor, to have integrity, to do something worthwhile. Earning more money so his father could own another yacht was none of those things.

To be a part of an unstoppable force, crushing those beneath him, be it with sword or finances, Mark was through being a centurion. He had no doubt that the business was much the same as the Roman army; when it was done with him, he would be thrown to the wolves.

The memories came easier now, but it wasn't like watching a movie. Memories came out of order, and he didn't really know what is going on half the time, only watched while scenes in translucent shards. The details elude him. He doesn't know why he was doing things in the memories, but Mark thought the reasons must have been very important in that life, even if now they are trivial. There are gaps and nothing is accounted for perfectly. He thunders through fields with Esca on a hunt, he's shuddering by a campfire racked with illness, Esca's face painted in orange and shadow. There is sunny farmland, the ghost of a man, the shine of an eagle. He's dragged behind a horse, training with troops, peeing in a snowdrift so steam comes up, writhing inn agony while someone digs in his leg, then standing at the prow of a ship, skating over water.

What is real are the people. The way they touch him and what they make him feel. Mark was surprised that he recognized Marcus' Uncle Aquila. In his warm steadiness Mark saw his old football coach who he still kept in contact with. Coach Gallo, who wanted Mark to try and go pro. 

He felt how much a man named Placidus is like Catherine's older brother Tom; someone whose teeth he just wants to kick in. A painted man in a mohawk streaks across his mind, and he's Liam McBride and if Mark has never even managed to feel angry at Liam, it was not because Mark knew Liam was right (though he was. Liam was better at the job, and what is more he wanted it) but because Marcus throttled and drowned him. Maybe Mark owed Liam.

A girl named Cottia laughed and threw back wild red curls, and she's so Catherine it hurts.

Esca was more complicated. Marcus had a lot of confusing emotions about him, and Mark can't pick through them fast enough. They well inside him, were all piled against one and other, many conflicting, want torn with should. Kinship. Disparity. Loyalty. Betrayal. Respect. Caution. Friendship. Duty.

Then it was deeper and more uncertain, and the emotions took an edge of longing. Mark could taste desire and fear and regret. Marcus didn't like to feel how he felt. As if it might betray not only Esca, but some inner principals. It was Mark who saw that Rome and Slavery yawn a precipice between them that was a chasm neither man can cross, no matter how both might reach.

The sessions left Mark drained, but each one lessened the pressure and he could sleep. His leg didn't hurt any more. Marcus's world was past, and each time Mark dipped into it, it some how felt more restful. More like he could let it go.

Except Esca.

He suspected what must have been down the embankment months ago. The reason why Marcus and Esca never managed to cross the divide, or even acknowledge how much they wanted to. It could only have been demise that prevented it. 

Mark didn't want to see it, did not want to see Esca's death ripple before his eyes, but he couldn't not see this thing through to the conclusion. He asked to know. Now he will bear it.  
"What is the end?" Cindra asked him and he is amongst the fighting once again.

The sounds he has heard so often play like a familiar soundtrack whose notable components he can anticipate. He still evaded the same obstacles, still dispatched the men, replaying the scene from it's start in the same footfalls as before. Yet, this time when his feet are tumbling down the hill, sending dirt up in sprays like water he was ready to know.

Esca was there, little and vicious, fighting with a snarl. Heat bloomed in Marcus' chest when he saw his friend alive and kicking and stabbing. He didn't remember who they were fighting, or why, except for a vague sensation that he was responsible for their presence. They were just shadows of the past. 

He worked his way over, shoving and hacking. He saw when Esca saw him. A part of a smile, a twitch of the wry mouth. They were back-to-back.

"Are you alright?" He shouted over the sound. Or, at least, it was something that meant that. Not in English. Mark didn't know the language. Latin, he supposed, but he knew what Marcus meant.

Esca was fine. Maybe a little banged up, but nothing that wouldn't mend. He was sunburned, but that was the climate.

Marcus suggested they leave. Quickly. His leg was hurting. They decided the best route in a warrior's short-hand of phrases, all the while combat washed over them. They couldn't win, Marcus knows that. He's a trained warrior, but he was crippled, and Esca, as cagey and lithe as he was, is no match for numbers. Marcus was not going to see him suffer here, when he has sacrificed so much.

It was impossible to say what precisely happened then. It was too quick. He only knews that in the moment he sensed danger he shifted to cover Esca's body with his own. It wasn't something he thought about. He just did it.

The pain ripped through him, and Mark and Marcus must have yelled together because Cindra's distant voice meshed with Esca's cry as she tells him to step back, to step away, not to be Marcus anymore, to step out of his skin, but he can't. Not yet. It's so real.

In his mind the frantic action continues, and he's falling, falling. Pain shatters down his torso, worse than his leg. Worse than anything. And he can see Esca. He looks devastated, and Marcus knows.

He can see the Briton turn his fury to the attacker and another body falls, spouting blood like a fountain from the throat into the dust.

"Marcus!" It's muted, the yell. Far away. "No, Marcus, you fool! How could you?!" There's a curse Esca's native language, and something that is pleading. Esca's hands are pressing, pushing to stop the bleeding, his face knotted anguish in as he sees the extent of it. Marcus winces when hands lay over bare tissue.

Blood thickens in his throat. He has to tell Esca. In a moment it will be too late. He chokes the name, and raises his hand to cup his friends cheek, leaving stark red smears. Esca grasps it in his own calloused grip and squeezes the fingers. It's anchoring.

Mark feels it then. Feels it all so sharply that he wonders it doesn't cut down into his soul, because he is Marcus at the same time as he is not. Esca is inside his heart. Even with Rome staring down on him, Marcus can't care any more. He wants to tell Esca what is inside of him, before it is too late. It will be too late. His vision is swimming and the pain is so beyond pain that he almost can't feel it. He tries to form the name, just the name on his lips, and he spits up something hideous tasting.

"Marcus! Stay with me!" Wide gray eyes. Wild gray eyes.

Esca can't see the shadows approaching behind him, he's too fixated on staunching a wound never to be closed, but Marcus' dwindling vision can. His confession dies to a warning. Not Esca, please Mithras, not Esca! Do not let him have killed Esca!

Then it is too late. He can't see any more, and no words have left his lips.

"...Come out Mark, it's time to leave Marcus. Esca is safe, Mark, just like you are safe. It's time to let Marcus go. We're going up the stairs now, Mark..."

He wasn't ashamed about crying this time.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last bit! Except for the epilogue.

“And look at this big lug!” Catherine smooshed her face against his and then gave Mark three kisses in a row on his cheek, making 'mmmwa!' noises in between each one. Mark rumpled his nose in amused patience and a little bit of pain; her hanging diamond earrings had pressed into his face. She was a little tipsy.

  
“I'm sooo glad you're heeeere!” Catherine said and gestured with her champagne flute to the other guests Mark had been talking nonsense to. “Last year he couldn't come to Hawaii, so I kidnapped him this year. Monte Carlo is good for the soul.”

  
“My soul feels pretty good,” Mark admitted. “And it was the kind of kidnapping without duct tape, thankfully.”

  
The group gave one of those polite chuckles you make at parties.

  
“Awww...I just love him.” Catherine pinched one of his cheeks next. “I love his funny face, I love how happy he is, with his new life,”

  
Mark loved his new life too. He felt fresh and new, and, at the same time, old and content. He didn't even find satisfaction imagining killing Liam McBride, though he'd left the man gaping when Mark left his resignation at Waterman and Grange over a year ago and suggested to Liam there may have been a place for him all the way at the top. It was like karma, kinda. Only karma did it on it's own, and Mark was maybe giving matters a little push. Still, when he last saw Liam, all he could do was remember that face, swirling under water, and he wished him well.

  
Now he worked with veterans, and ran a fledgling company which found them employment. It made him happy, it was work that mattered.

  
“I love this place, I love all of you, I think I love everything.” Catherine carried on.

  
Mark swiped her mostly full flute and signaled to one of the waiters milling around her apartment to ask for some coffee. “Otherwise you'll be too drunk to blow out all the candles on your cake without falling in.” He said when Catherine stuck her tongue out at him.

  
“Spoilsport.” she said.

  
“It's too nice a dress to ruin with all that blue icing. And expensive.”

  
“Aww...maybe I just love you,” Her head sagged onto his shoulder, and Mark excused them from the cluster of party guests who smiled bemusedly at them. He knew what they thought, but felt no need to contradict whatever suspicions they didn't bother to hide behind twinkling eyes.

  
He walked Catherine over to the balcony railing. It was a warm night, and the sea glittered below by the lights of the shore and the fat moon hovering overhead. Music chased along the breeze. Monte Carlo was good for the soul. Mark had been enjoying his stay, even if he'd done nothing more extravagant than walk the twisted roads and eat delicious things.

  
They stood together, Catherine with an arm tucked through his. Salt air assailed them.

  
“Did I?” She said after a time, when her hands were full of a coffee cup and she'd taken a few sobering sips.

  
“Did you what?” Mark asked.

  
“Love you. You know. Before.” She said the last part in a stage whisper. Catherine was the only one he'd told about his trip through the rabbit hole. She was the only one he trusted enough He was proud of her. No matter how much she loved gossip, she'd kept it behind her teeth, even if sometimes she seems to think he's the Great Oz.

  
“I don't know.” Mark answerd honestly. “What do you think?”

  
“I think....you've always felt like you've belonged with someone else. Like you've got a name. Right here.” She zipped a finger across his left breast, as if he was wearing a name tag. “I think it took me a while to get it, what you were explaining. That it wasn't man or woman; it was just this one person, and it didn't matter what the packaging was, they were for you. I'm sorry about Jeffery. And Keisuke. And Tony. And Wayne.”

  
“And Dante?”

  
“Alright, geez, him too. I just wanted you to be happy. You were sad for so long. I thought happy meant you were gay now and a few blind dates would be helpful.”  
Mark chuckled. He couldn't help it. He pulled her in for a half hug and rubbed her arm. Catherine was just the kind of girl who needed to pull out a label-maker so she'd know where to shelve him. He got that. He just wasn't ready to label himself. That tended to cut back on your options.

  
Catherine looked up at him, and her eyes went all squishy. “I want that for me, a one true love. I thought about being jealous of you, but then I thought about what it must be like to lose that and remember loosing it.”

  
“Your mascara will run,” He fetched a handkerchief out of his pocket in a hurry, and blottted her eyes for her before she wrecks all the smokey eyeshadow she probably spent an hour applying.

  
“I know, but it's so sad.”

  
“It isn't.” He went to work on the other eye.

  
“Isn't it?”

  
“No.”

  
“Why not?”

  
“Because. Even thought you die, it doesn't mean the bonds between the people who mean the most to you break.”

  
“You don't believe in endings?”

  
“Of course I do. I think it's all the same. An ending is a beginning.” Mark smiled. It sounded a bit Yoda.

  
Catherine sniffed.

  
“No crying,” Mark reminds her, and he hears the party go quiet, then start up the notes of 'Happy Birthday'. “Cake.”

There were a lot of things Mark has grown to accept. He isn't Marcus, he's his own man who is free to be a little different (even if he does admit a new appreciation for antique Roman weaponry). He hasn't seen Cindra in years, and his leg hasn't troubled him since he remembered. He doesn't need her, or any other counsel. He's got a path. It's not where he thought he'd walk, but he finds it fits under his feet. He's even a pro at meditation. He has let the past go.

  
Except for the smallest part of him, which is calmly waiting. He thinks it's that part that believes in fate, in circles. It doesn't bother him, and it doesn't stop him from having relationships, from forging ahead.

  
This doesn't fool Catherine, even if he'd bothered to lie to her. She knows he's waiting, and is okay with that. She seemed to have settled with 'Bi-sexual' and left it at that.

  
Not that she's put a heck of a lot of thought into it just lately. Mark was going to be Man-of-Honor at her wedding. He liked the guy she was marrying, even if Darren is old money and wears too many polo shirts. Mark even footed the bill for a bachelorette party, doing the tame half of the planning and letting the other bride's maids pick out the more wild activities. He let the gaggle of women escort Catherine out to a night on the town in Reno. He knew it would be way too awkward for them to get rowdy and go to sex shops dragging him along. They can at least pretend the limo driver is blind, deaf and dumb, since they probably won't ever see him again.

  
The wedding will take place in a church in Lake Tahoe, since that's where she met Darren, boating on the lake. He has a summer place there, a place Catherine has decided she wants to call home. She announced she was done flitting around in glamorous places, that she wanted to try being a mom. She wanted roots.  
Mark believed her, when she came down the aisle in some ridiculously expensive dress, her eyes soft and and happy from the inside out, and he rememberd that people change. Maybe Catherine was always so busy to distract her from the hole in her own heart.

  
It was a service dripping with flowers, a huge bridal party dressed in champagne and white, beaming relatives and vows that echoed off of old ceilings. Mark was so happy for her he was grinning ear to ear, and he forgot he was forced into a waistcoat. Most weddings seem to take forever, but this one zipped by and all too quickly that famous music by Mendelssohn is chiming and the bridge and groom rushed out under sprays of ecologically safe bird-seed.

  
As soon as the bridal party and guests relocated to the beach-side hotel where a tent and dance floor is set up under the trees, Mark got to tell her in a toast how pleased he was for her. She started to get weepy, and he watched her husband read the signs and blot her before her eye make-up could run. While it's a big-brotherly duty he was sad to see go, he didn't begrudge its loss.

  
Catherine did know how to throw a party. The food was excellent, the music was great, the cake a monumental pile of sugar-paste flowers, the event framed in white Chinese lanterns bobbing in the breeze like fairy lights.. No one made inappropriate drunk speeches. The bridesmaids even told him their dresses are awesome, and not disasters they need to feel shame for having photographic record of. Some people shuffed off their shoes to dance barefoot in the sand, rather than on the dance floor, and there's a videographer running around catching everything for posterity.

  
After a time, the very old and the very young move on, having seen the cake cut, the bouquet tossed and nearly everyone dance the chicken dance because Catherine says it's tradition. They returned to their accommodations or their homes leaving the romantic and the energetic to linger as afternoon dips into evening.  
He was sitting at a table with his tie undone and sipping a glass of scotch. He was watching the water and a middle aged couple with their wedding finery held high as they strolled in the tickling waves. The sun was slowly setting.

  
“Mark!” Catherine called laughingly. She was flushed. He smiled, setting down his drink and sitting at attention, taking her hands when she thrust them his way. She pulled him to his feet.

  
“Why aren't you dancing?”

  
“You know I need something with a beat. Anyone can sway to this stuff,” The stuff, he was fairly sure, was Gershwin.

  
Catherine laughed and turned, beckoning someone forward. “Mark, Mark, remember how I told you I was having this genius local guy re-do my cabinets and that you should get him to build you a specialty case for all those old weapons you've started collecting? Mark Waterman, this is Calder Brightman,” Mark flicked his gaze away from Catherine, his hand extended to the person he is being introduced to.

  
The world dropped away.

  
Mark thought Catherine was saying how Calder wasn't really a contractor, that he was a wood artist, and he was debasing himself in just doing a kitchen, but it all ran over Mark like water.

A thousand and more years later and Esca was shaking his hand.

  
No. Not Esca, he forced himself to think. Calder. But the angular face was so close to Esca. Firm chinned, with low brows and a spiky cacophony of hair atop his head which probably looked sleep fuzzed on purpose. His hand was rough, the hand of a craftperson, and his body was lean and taunt. When Mark looked into his eyes they're gray-blue, and when he looked deep he could see the similarities, and when he looked very deep he could see Esca. Even if he wasn't wearing a hauntingly familiar face Mark suspected he might have recognized him, because Esca is in his blood, stitched into the fabric of his very soul.

  
“Well, aren't you going to say something?” Catherine said, a well placed elbow to Mark's ribs. “He's not really this awkward around new faces.” She confided to Calder.  
“I know,” Calder said, retrieving his palm. “He seemed reasonably eloquent when he was toasting you.”

  
“Just caught me at a tongue-tied moment, I guess. My mind was miles.” Mark recovered. He remembered to smile. He had to be normal, even when his heart shuddered and skipped unsteadily in his chest.

  
“No shit,” Calder said.

  
“It's...nice of you to do work for Catherine. She's been bragging about you a lot.”

  
“It has not been bragging, Calder, not bragging.” Catherine said.

“Boasting, then.” Mark said, smiling. He could not tear his eyes away. Why should he look so much like Esca? It didn't seem right at the same time as it swelled him with heat. He knew that he didn't look all that different from Marcus. Why should it be?

  
Circles.

  
“It has been a few minor comments about how you are going to make my kitchen an artful place to cook, and artists should be nurtured in economies like this one, so Mark should commission you.” Catherine said.

  
“I'm flattered you're pimping me out.” Calder smiled. Brief, polite.

  
Catherine laughed and was suddenly swept away into her new husband's arms for another dance.

  
Alone, with Calder, Mark has never been so inarticulate in his life. Their conversation shudderd and paused, then lumbered with the agility of a drunken giraffe. There were so many things he wanted to say, but on the spot? It seemed ludicrous. He didn't know how to say half the preposterous things that boiled in the back of his mind. Es—Calder would thing he was drunk. Even if he had been practicing for this eventuality, carrying a note-card all neatly inscribed with what he wanted to say in his pocket like a talisman to bring fortune his way, what transition could he have into the topic? He didn't know how to not sound like he was trying to pick Calder up, not without it looking like a lonely wedding hook up.

  
It wasn't the right time and the place, he knew that in one dazzling moment. So he basked in a presence, working over rough conversation about Calder's work, and how he knew Catherine and other banalities and Jesus he wished...he wished there was recognition in those sharp eyes.

  
But he's not Esca. He's Calder.

  
And in a few minutes he remarks that he was just on his way out when Catherine nabbed him, that he better get going.

  
Bereft, Mark could just watch the little frame as it turned and strode confidently away. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, to force himself not to get up, not to make an ass of himself, to keep his mouth shut and not call Calder back and say something horrendously pitiful and borderline crazy. But, Mark watched until Calder was out of sight.

  
Then he did what any man did when he had to watch something he couldn't and shouldn't have walk away. He ordered another drink.

 

“Aren't you supposed to be upstairs being deflowered?” Mark asked when he opened the the door to his hotel room, and Catherine was standing there in a robe at some ridiculous morning hour with sunshine being repulsively cheerful. His mood was foul. He hadn't slept well. Alcohol might have soothed parts of him, but he wasn't about to drink enough to get well and roaring drunk at Catherine's wedding. He may have been pathetic, but he wasn't enough of an asshole to ruin the day for Darren and Catherine.

  
“Funny. Like you weren't the first person I called when I was deflowered. In my senior year.” Her eyes were sober and Mark braced an arm against the door. He had rolled out of bed to answer the door, and was still in his sweat pants and under shirt. Not exactly dressed to be hanging out of his room door in a hotel as nice as this.

  
“Well?” He asked as she just looked at him.

  
“That was him, wasn't it?"

  
He stiffened. For a split second he wanted to pretend he didn't know what she was talking about. He wanted to avoid having to discuss it. He wasn't in the mood.  
“After I stopped trying to hook you up, I accidentally found him.” Catherine said. She was nothing if not persistent and determined.  
“Yeah.” It came out on a sigh.

  
Catherine's eyes tumbled away, and her murmur was both revelatory and not directed at him. “There are no accidents, are there?”

  
She straightened back to him. “You should have tried dating one of the guys I hooked you up with a hundred years ago, then you would have at least had some practice. I've never seen you fumble, like that. You've always been really good at the lines.”

  
“I wasn't trying to pick him up, Catherine.”

  
“You know what I mean. And I know you. I know it mattered.”

  
Mark pressed his hands against his eyes. “I don't want to talk about it.” Ever. “And your husband is waiting. Breakfast in bed. Marital bliss. Whatever.”  
He tried to close the door, but she wedged it open with her hand. Sympathy. Determination. Then she held up something hooked in two fingers. A jacket. It was hunter green, leather.

  
“I promised I'd get it to him. The coat-check guy lost it.”

  
Mark's eyes fastened on the coat.

  
“Lost it.” He repeated.

  
“Fine. It grew legs and walked into my suite. What you should say is 'thank you Catherine, I won't screw it up this time' or ' Catherine! Thank you for finding my dream man for me against all cosmic odds' or 'Catherine, you are the best friend ever'. I put his business card in the pocket. It has the address.”

  
Mark took the jacket gently, almost reverently in big hands that were actually trembling. Like it was the damn Shroud of Turin. He resisted bringing it to his face to smell, but only barely.

  
Catherine smiled. “Go get him, tiger.”

 

Calder's residence was both a workshop and a home, accessed by a two mile dirt road off the lake. It was isolated enough that a visitor could be heard coming a mile away. The building sat high and proud with windows everywhere, so Calder had views of the tree laden mountains, the lake, the whole beautiful picture that was Tahoe. No architectural spit-up, the house had clearly been remodeled and personalized with the clever hands of someone who knew wood. It had been made into something completely his own.

  
Outside there are stacks of partially chopped fire wood, dirt bikes and the domestic mess of a guy living on his own. Esca lived out here, wild and free, not making war, but art. It pleased Mark.

  
When Mark knocked on the door it opened and the smell of wood wafted out, warm and earthy. Mark could see the work-room just beyond Calder, bright with early morning sunlight streaming in through huge windows with no curtains. The sky was open and endlessly blue today. At night the stars must have been breathtaking.  
Mark only registered that a moment, since most of his attention was for Calder. The familiarity of the face pulled at him again. No longer dressed for an outing, he had shabby work clothes on, flecked with wood dust.

  
Calder looked at him blankly. “You selling something?”

  
“I'm Mark. Mark Waterman. We met at the wedding. Catherine's Wedding. Last night.” Mark rambled.

  
Calder quirked a brow and it stabbed right through Mark.

  
“You forgot this.”

  
Mark extended the jacket. Calder took a moment to identify it as his own, then reached to take it.

  
Mark held onto it, refusing to release. He looked into eyes he remembers. Gray, wild gray.

  
“I need to say something. Something crazy. I'm not unbalanced, but it'll still sound crazy, and I still need to say it. I've... been waiting a long time to say it.”  
He watched Calder's eyes go from puzzled to wary. Mark let go of the jacket and Calder's pose became rigid and full of suspicion.

  
“A few hours doesn't seem like such a long time to wait.” Sarcastic.

  
Mark closed his eyes. “But sometime B.C. is.”

  
Calder snorted.

  
“Wait, Please,” Mark said when Calder turned to go inside, dismissing him. He put everything he hoped into those words, and knew that, not being much of a liar, his face is an open book. He didn't touch Calder, hands held up to reaffirm how much of a threat he wasn't. Calder turned, and Mark looked in those eyes and prayed something in his face or eyes hesitated the compact body. Or maybe just Catherine. The thought that Catherine wouldn't have a crazy friend.

  
Calder made a sound of irritation, and his fingers flicked in a sharp 'hurry it up' slash then muttered. “Should have my head checked. Yeah, what?”

  
Mark took a breath. Pieces and parts he composed while vigorously showering flew out the window. He couldn't remember how he planned to start!

  
“I'm...not good at this sort of thing, with the words.” He said.

  
Calder gave him a look tinged with incredulity. “ Really? You didn't rehearse your stalker speech? You've had over twelve hours to work it out.”  
The words should have cut into him, but they don't.

  
He let go. Some part of Marcus is in him, and he knows what he wants to say.

  
“Marcus...was full of regret, when he died. Not for anything he had done; well, maybe a few things, but mostly he regretted the things he didn't do. That he wasn't strong enough and he couldn't protect Esca, but mostly that there were things he never got to say. That he left things unfinished between them. He didn't expect to die, not that anyone does, but...” Mark shook his head to clear it, eyes pressing closed a moment before continuing.

  
“There was so much stuff for Marcus. History and honor and the way he thought he should feel about things made something simple and wonderful into something confusing. Esca was everything to Marcus, his friendship saved him and made him a better man. Esca was loyal and true and good and he deserved to be free, really free. Marcus regretted he couldn't give that freedom, and then regretted there wasn't more between them. But... if someone had to be left standing, if one of them was left alone without the other, Marcus would rather have died than to be the survivor.”

  
Mark shoved his hands in his pockets, knowing Calder must think him incredibly lame. What he felt was relief. So much he needed to say. He felt the knotted threads that had been digging bands into his soul release and unwind. He let the last piece go, the piece that had never been spoken.

  
“Marcus just needed Esca to know that he loved him, I guess. At the end, he wasn't ashamed of it and feeling that way for Esca -loving him- was something he would never, ever regret.” Awkward now. Mark hunched his shoulders, shoving himself back into his jacket. “That's...that's all.”

  
When Calder didn't move or say anything, Mark turned swiftly and took the steps down to the gravel, heading for his rental car. Flight seemed cowardly, but he couldn't bear to hear derision, now that the words, in-eloquent as they were, had been said. Calder's face had been impassive for the duration, but his eyes were on Mark, never wavering.

  
Mark was groping for his keys with slick hands when a voice hollered.

  
“Hey!”

  
Mark paused, took a breath, then turned.

  
Calder was standing in the open doorway, still, the sunlight behind him making his hair into a burnish halo. He gripped the frame, the jacket thrown over his shoulder, an odd expression on his face. For a moment, they just looked at each other.

  
Calder shifted his stance, one bare foot inside, the other over the threshold. He looked uncomfortable, now.

  
“...Would it be weird to say I knew that?” He called. “But that, even thought I knew it, I'm glad to-or, no- No-it was important to hear you say it?”

  
“No weirder than my knowing I needed to say it.” Mark answered. He didn't scale weird any more. He was clutching his keys in a death grip in an effort keep cool, not even daring to pray.

  
Calder rubbed his knuckles against the heel of his other hand. “So...I'm Esca, then?”

  
“Were, maybe. Once.”

  
“And you're Marcus.”

  
“Not any more.”

  
They grew silent and fell back into just looking at one and other.

  
Calder broke the contact once more by looking back into his work room. His stance shifted again before deliberation faded from his features. He flicked his head towards the open portal while looking at Mark. “You want some coffee?”

  
Oh God yes.

  
“If you mess with me, I will end you.” Calder warned as Mark approached the porch stairs. “I'm not big, but I will fuck you up seriously. I have chainsaws.”

  
Mark smiled. He's knew it was a big sloppy grin, but he couldn't stop it. Didn't want to stop it.

  
“Duly noted.” He said.

  
Calder shut the door behind them. “I had this dream about a dude on a black horse last night, and he looked a lot like you, it was really fucking weird...”

 

_Fini._


End file.
